From Madrid, this last day of October of the year one thousand six
hundred and fifteen.

At the service of Your Excellency:

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA




THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

God bless me, gentle (or it may be plebeian) reader, how eagerly must
thou be looking forward to this preface, expecting to find there
retaliation, scolding, and abuse against the author of the second Don
Quixote--I mean him who was, they say, begotten at Tordesillas and born
at Tarragona! Well then, the truth is, I am not going to give thee that
satisfaction; for, though injuries stir up anger in humbler breasts, in
mine the rule must admit of an exception. Thou wouldst have me call him
ass, fool, and malapert, but I have no such intention; let his offence be
his punishment, with his bread let him eat it, and there's an end of it.
What I cannot help taking amiss is that he charges me with being old and
one-handed, as if it had been in my power to keep time from passing over
me, or as if the loss of my hand had been brought about in some tavern,
and not on the grandest occasion the past or present has seen, or the
future can hope to see. If my wounds have no beauty to the beholder's
eye, they are, at least, honourable in the estimation of those who know
where they were received; for the soldier shows to greater advantage dead
in battle than alive in flight; and so strongly is this my feeling, that